DPWH still looking for 150 missing vehicles

What will they think of next?

For the past weeks, the Department of Public Works and Highways has been trying to find out what had happened to 150 vehicles owned by the DPWH that were recently discovered to be missing.

Three people whose assigned vehicles were among the missing have claimed to government auditors that they lost the vehicles to car thieves, a source privy to the inquiry told The STAR.

One of them even ventured to say he failed to report the missing car because he has been looking for the car since 1990, the source said. "He is lucky if he finds the car after 12 years," the same source said.

The three were told to produce a police report to verify their claims.

"We are still checking their claims. We do not even know exactly when they were stolen because we were not provided with police reports," the source said. "It will all depend on the police report if they will be cleared of any liability for the loss."

Earlier, auditors found that some of the 150 vehicles had been assigned to people who were then working on a DPWH project but were not returned after the project was completed.

The DPWH began an audit of its vehicles in August following the discovery of an embezzlement scam involving "ghost" vehicle repairs that siphoned at least P150 million in department funds and was going on for years. Forty-one DPWH officials and personnel are being investigated.

Auditors found that 150 of the DPWH’s over 500 vehicles were missing.

At least five missing vehicles were found to have been inexplicably assigned to non-DPWH personnel, including one to Sen. Ramon Revilla and another to Agusan del Norte Rep. Edelmiro Amante.

An Amante aide claimed that he returned the car months ago, while Revilla said the vehicle was assigned to him because he is the chairman of the Senate committee on public works and needs it to inspect various DPWH projects in many parts of the country.

Senate leaders cleared Revilla of any wrongdoing while Public Works Secretary Simeon Datumanong said the vehicle issued to him was not a subject of the embezzlement scandal.

DPWH investigators have not yet determined if assigning the vehicles to people not connected with the DPWH was illegal.

The vehicle repair scam began sometime in the 1980s and was discovered only early this year.

The DPWH had long been seen as one of the most corrupt government agencies along with the Bureau of Internal Revenue, Bureau of Customs and the Philippine National Police.